Constitutional conservatives were dismayed to learn that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away at age 79 on Saturday, during a quail hunting trip in Texas. He had served on the Court since being appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and was the longest serving justice. And as one of his former students observed, “He authored more concurrences than any other justice on the court, because Antonin Scalia wanted to be heard, and would let no one else’s views define his own.” (See this for a short biography of the justice.)

He was well known for his witty and biting sarcasm. Frequently in the conservative minority, he wrote many scathing dissents and aggressively challenged lawyers during oral arguments. He had a piercingly brilliant mind that frustrated his opponents. While those on the right admired this, many on the left, not surprisingly, couldn’t stand it. One writer at Slate characterized his work as a justice this way: “He presented cruel, demeaning views in thought-provoking and stirring ways.”

Originalist and Textualist

Scalia was also well known for his originalist interpretation of the Constitution, which looks to the Founding Fathers’ intent when they drafted the Constitution and to the intent of later lawmakers when they crafted Constitutional amendments. The Constitution is “not a living document,” he famously said in a speech to Southern Methodist University in 2013. “It’s dead, dead, dead.” He was bound by the text, not his own wishes. “The judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge,” he said. Since he came on the court, originalist analyses appeared frequently in court opinions, even from left-leaning justices.

He was a textualist when it came to statutory interpretation, interpreting statutes solely on their wording and ignoring extraneous evidence such as legislative testimony. “Scalia taught us that the law matters, that the law is the written word and that the written word takes its meaning from how history understands it, not what we wish it might mean,” wrote the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Larkin, Jr. This focus on the written word put him in the league of a handful of justices who “changed the course of the law.”

One journalist who covered the Supreme Court from 2003 to 2007 observed that Scalia’s legacy was “certainly reshaping American law in a way that reflected conservative principles and this idea of originalism.” Stephen Henderson of The Detroit Free Press called Scalia the “godfather” of “the idea that we ought to interpret the law today as the founders intended it and that anything that conflicts with that is unconstitutional.”

Scalia passionately embraced his constitutional interpretation, resulting in a powerful, consistently clear message. His influence there was so vast it crossed over into mainstream politics, as he became a household name for those on the right. Henderson said, “Popular conservatism owes much of its thinking today to people like Justice Scalia.”

One of Scalia’s biggest accomplishments on the Court, Henderson said, was authoring the Heller decision in 2008, which struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban as an infringement on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. A strong defender of the Second Amendment, he once memorably said during a Fox News Sunday interview in 2012, “Obviously the [Second] Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and ‘bear,’ so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.”

Scathing Humor

He had no competition on the court when it came to humorous, scathing concurrences and dissents. Scalia referred to part of the majority’s opinion in last year’s Obamacare decision in his dissent as “pure applesauce.” He ridiculed another part, saying “This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it re-writes the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

He further mocked the Court’s attempt to rewrite the Obamacare law in order to uphold it, commenting, “It is bad enough for a court to cross out ‘by the State’ once. But seven times?” He went on, “Faced with overwhelming confirmation that ‘Exchange established by the State’ means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation.”

In a dissent to last year’s same-sex marriage decision, Scalia lambasted the majority, commenting, “The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” In another decision striking down a school policy that prohibited a church access, he separately concurred but colorfully expressed his disgust with the majority: “As to the Court’s invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District.”

Fortunately, there is still one Supreme Court justice left on the bench who shares Scalia’s originalist interpretation of the Constitution, Clarence Thomas. However, he keeps a low profile on the court, rarely asking questions during oral argument. Justice Samuel Alito, who acquired the nickname “Scalito” due to his similar voting record, is considered a minimalist, preferring to accept precedent and decide decisions on very narrow grounds, but has shown leanings toward originalism in recent decisions.

It will be a high bar to approach the Scalia’s influence Scalia in defending originalism on the court and in promoting it in the conservative movement and the wider legal community.

What Happens Next?

President Obama has said he intends to appoint Scalia’s replacement — even though since World War II, when a Supreme Court justice died or retired during a president’s last year in office, outgoing presidents have generally not appointed a replacement. Senate Republicans have indicated they may block Obama from bringing a nominee up for a vote. They also have the numbers to vote down a nominee or filibuster it. The influential SCOTUS blog predicts Obama will nominate his far left Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Whether a new justice is appointed to replace Scalia this year or not, several cases on which the court would probably have taken a conservative position by a 5–4 vote may now be decided for the liberal position. When the court splits 4–4, the lower court of appeals decision is affirmed. Cases that could break against conservatives include a challenge to public employee unions,  the counting of illegal immigrants for redistricting in Texas and a case concerning religious accommodation under Obamacare for birth control.

However, two other cases in which the lower courts took a conservative position, a challenge to Obama’s executive order stopping illegal immigrants from being deported and a challenge to Texas’s strict abortion law, would be left standing. In a third case, challenging affirmative action in Texas, left-leaning Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because she worked on the case as solicitor general, so the court may strike it down 4–3.

His “towering intellect” will be missed on the Court, Thomas wrote. “It is hard to imagine the Court without my friend. I will miss him beyond all measure.”